Interviews

First time in Montreal, Dalie will warm our hearts on February 2 at Club Balattou, bringing us sunshine from her native Congo. Singer, songwriter, dancer, percussionist and actor, she’s coming as part of a women’s artistic residency, but will also be taking advantage of the opportunity to take part in one of Nuits d’Afrique’s five concert-events as part of Black History Month. Come and discover a multi-talented artist whom our journalist Sandra Gasana had the pleasure of interviewing.

Created in 2003 before making its Broadway debut in 2005, The Light at the Piazza is one of those works that mixes the codes of popular Broadway performances with the lyrical musical lines of operatic language. Winner of six Tony Awards, including Best Original Score, the composer’s sophisticated score is both a rewarding project for Opera McGill’s young opera artists, and an interpretative and technical challenge. A few hours before the opening night of this performance at the Monument national, which runs from January 31 to February 2, Alexandre Villemaire spoke for PAN M 360 with conductor Jonathan Monro, who will be at the podium for all three performances, to talk about the work and its particular aesthetic.

The Light in the Piazza

Libretto by CRAIG LUCAS
Music and lyrics by ADAM GUETTEL

Jonathan Monro, chef
David Gately, director (Catherine Thornhill Steele Visiting Artist)

January 31 at 7:30

February 1 at 7:30

February 2 at 2pm

Tickets are available HERE

Inspired by Franz Kafka’s celebrated novel Metamorphosis, this immersive 360° program features two Maltese artists: pianist Tricia Dawn Williams and composer Ruben Zahra. More specifically, Kafka’s Insect is a multimedia performance presented at the Satosphère on February 17, as part of the SMCQ’s Montreal / New Musics festival. For this, Ruben Zahra has imagined a cycle of video art tableaux evoking the narrative framework of Metamorphosis, under the sonic impulse of the piano and an analog synthesizer – Moog Mother 32. A laboratory flask shatters on the floor, rain pelts windows, apples are thrown against the wall, dinnerware rattles and more. Here’s a work in which sound is deeply linked to the video images projected onto the hyperbolic screen, images shot with the 1838 Daguerreotype Achromat lens. This vintage lens captures a soft light with textured backgrounds when in focus, adding to the singular look of Kafka’s Insect. For www.panm360.com, Alain Brunet caught up with Ruben Zahra in Malta, a few days before his flight to Montreal.

Crédit photo: Emma Tranter

Event presented as part of Festival Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques / 12th edition (2025) – Music and images.

Participants

Program

Satosphère – Société des arts technologiques1195, boulevard Saint-Laurent – H2X 2S6métro Saint-LaurentMonday, February 17, 2025 7:30 pm

Online ticketing

Publicité panam

Drummer, visual artist and science-fiction enthusiast Michel Langevin is best known for his role as percussionist with Voivod, the iconic Quebec metal band he co-founded 42 years ago. One of Voivod’s dreams was to experience symphonic metal, a dream that is finally coming true at PdA’s Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. Dina Gilbert will lead Voivod and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal in this fusion of metal and symphonic music. Alain Brunet interviewed her ahead of what promises to be a historic event for Quebec music lovers.

Publicité panam

Quebec-born Dina Gilbert is the maestra who has conducted the symphonic hip-hop experiments of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and other European orchestras, notably for I Am, MC Solaar, Big Flo et Oli and the leading figures of rap keb. This time, she conducts the OSM and the emblematic Quebec metal band Voivod. Hugo Bégin’s arrangements should both magnify and transform the 12 Voivod songs on the program. Two unique evenings at the OSM, January 29 and 30 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier.

Photo Credit: Patrick Boucher

From the point of view of complexity and demand for virtuosity, metal is the most advanced form of rock expression, whether you like the violence or not. Trained as a trombonist, composer and, in this case, arranger, Hugo Bégin has grasped this perfectly and proceeded to create 12 arrangements for 12 songs by Voivod, undoubtedly the emblematic band of Quebec metal after 42 years of loyal service. That’s why PAN M 360 is looking into the matter! Our esteemed colleague Laurent Bellemare and Alain Brunet asked Hugo Bégin about the ins and outs of these two historic evenings of symphonic metal at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, on January 29 and 30.

The Year of the Dragon, which will end on January 30, will be marked by music and the meeting of East and West. Conceived a few years ago, the Maison symphonique will perform the world premiere of Christian Thomas’ Concerto for Pipa, which will be performed by virtuoso Liu Fang, one of the most renowned in the world and described as “the empress of the pipa.” The unique notes of the pipa, this ancient Chinese instrument, will join those of the FILMharmonique Orchestra conducted by Françis Choinière, which will also perform the famous violin concerto Les Amants papillons, with violinist Guillaume Villeneuve as soloist, as well as Stravinsky’s The Firebird. A few days before the concert, Alexandre Villemaire spoke with Christian Thomas about the composition of his concerto.

Read Frédéric Cardin’s review of the concerto

For more information and tickets, click HERE

Photo Credit: Enzo Wong

M/NM presents Delta (s), an immersive experience at McGill University’s formidable Music Multimedia Room (MMR). The program is performed by Duo AIRS, featuring percussionist David Therrien-Brongo and multi-saxophonist Louis-Philippe Bonin, joined by composer and guitarist Alexandre David, notably for his piece Delta (s), which brilliantly combines the aesthetics of contemporary music, rock metal and Balinese gamelan. Immersive of a third kind! Conceived by Andrew Staniland, Alexander Schubert, Nicole Lizée and Rocio Cano Valiño, other related works will also be performed in solos, duets and trios. To find out more, Alain Brunet spoke to David Therrien-Brongo and Alexandre David.

This program is scheduled for February 19 at McGill’s Music Multimedia Room, presented by the SMCQ as part of Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques / 12e édition (2025) – Musique et images.

Participants

Designer

  • Frédéric Lebel, sound

Program

On January 17, the young Quebec ensemble Quatuor Cobalt officially launched its first album, Reflets du temps. Through three works by female composers of different periods and styles (Maddalena Sirmen, Fanny Mendelssohn and Alicia Terzian), ranging from the classical era to the present day, the quartet – made up of Guillaume Villeneuve and Diane Bayard (violins), Clément Bufferne (viola) and François Leclerc (cello) – express a shared passion for the variety of the string quartet repertoire, while adding their own personal touch, notably through interpretation on period instruments. PAN M 360 contributor Alexandre Villemaire spoke with François Leclerc about this launch and the quartet’s upcoming projects.

Photo Credit: Annie Ethier

Video, calligraphy and live painting are on the program performed by the Trio d’argent. Three French flautists will perform Déry, Yu, Sinnhuber, Dazzi and Daudin-Clavaud, whose works were composed for their ensemble. This program fits in perfectly with the general theme of M/NM, namely the very contemporary link between music and image. This conversation between creative music and graphic or pictorial art. In real time, calligrapher Shanshan Sun will perform in concert with the musicians. We’ll also be evoking the famous mangas of Jirô Taniguchi, not to mention the live drawing videos of the late Kim Jung-gi. The flautists of the Trio d’Argent draw the audience into the Asian “art of the line”. “Each graphic expression, highlighted by the musical gesture, reveals a new facet of this subtle, harmonious universe. ”

Event presented at the Festival Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques / 12e édition (2025) — Musique et images.

Participants

Designers

Program

Inspired by the poetry of the gifted Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), I Am Vertical brings together the Montreal ensembles Cordâme and Sixtrum. Cordâme’s leader, double bassist Jean-Félix Mailloux, has adapted texts by the American author and put them into the mouth of singer Coral Egan, around whom strings and percussion unfold. Sixtrum is one of our main percussive vehicles for local and international creative music. Cordâme, for its part, is a chamber jazz ensemble that multiplies crossovers and superimpositions with modern music from classical traditions of all eras. A few days before the program launch, Alain Brunet interviewed Jean-Félix Mailloux and Fabrice Marandola, Sixtrum’s spokesmen. For PAN M 360!

INFO AND TICKETS HERE

Program

Jean-Félix Mailloux: Canadian Creations (2025) – several movements to poems by Sylvia Plath

I am vertical
Mirror
Altea
The night dances
Daddy
Balloons
Soliloquy Of The Solipsist
Ariel
You’re 
Insomniac

Artists

The collaborative exploration between vocal ensemble Phth and visual artist Beth Frey promises immersive, spontaneous and interactive storytelling. This real-time experience takes place on Sunday, February 16 at the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), as part of the Montreal / New Musics festival presented by the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ). Beth Frey’s art video is populated by strange, “morphologically ambiguous” creatures, who find their vocal repartee in a quintet of singers inclined to improvisation and advanced singing techniques, including onomatopoeia, borborygms and other sounds from a lyrical vocabulary developed by the avant-garde over recent decades. Bizarre from the outset, there’s nothing austere about Phth and Beth Frey’s joint approach: humor and surprise are an integral part of the affair. Like their video interlocutor, Phth’s artists are all composers and improvisers, perfectly capable of laying the foundations of a coherent and attractive edifice. To better prepare for this experience, Alain Brunet met with Phth’s Beth Frey and Gabriel Dharmoo.

Participants

Concept by

Program

More info: Festival Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques / 12e édition (2025) — Musique et images.

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